MUMBAI: Asia’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, spent the last two decades transforming the stodgy petrochemicals giant he inherited into a global empire spanning telecoms, retail, cricket and luxury fashion.
His youngest son Anant marries childhood sweetheart Radhika Merchant in a lavish three-day wedding in Mumbai beginning Friday, an opportunity for the tycoon to showcase his place at the top of India’s corporate hierarchy.
The occasion has been preceded by several extravagant parties boasting a guest list drawn from the world’s political, financial and cultural elite.
Guests have included Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft’s Bill Gates and ex-US president Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka, with performances from pop stars Rihanna, Katy Perry and Justin Bieber.
With a net worth estimated at $123 billion by Forbes – and one of Asia’s most powerful people, Ambani has for years been emblematic of India’s growing economic clout.
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Ambani was born in 1957 and raised in Mumbai, where his father Dhirubhai started a successful yarn trading business that earned him the nickname the “polyester prince”.
By the time his son joined the family business in 1981 after dropping out of an MBA programme at Stanford University, the company – now known as Reliance – was expanding fast.
Dhirubhai entrusted the 24-year-old with building the firm’s first mega petrochemical plant in India, reportedly telling him: “I am not going to really hold your hand… or mollycoddle you through this project.
“If you can make it, very good, if you cannot, we will find somebody else,” he added.
“My father really took a chance on me,” Ambani recalled in a 2002 interview with talk show host Simi Garewal.
The former gas station attendant was grooming both Mukesh and his younger son Anil to take over the rags-to-riches empire when he died suddenly in 2002 without leaving a will.
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